


i never learnt to share

by mockturtletale



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Fruit, M/M, Routine, Sexual Tension, Sharing, sharing food
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-26
Updated: 2013-08-26
Packaged: 2018-02-06 08:12:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1850824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mockturtletale/pseuds/mockturtletale
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is a good apple. It’s especially crisp, so sour it’s making Ryan’s mouth water with every bite, and Ryan doesn’t want to share. That’s not how this works.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i never learnt to share

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a prompt on home_ice.

Ryan eats an apple before every game he plays, and he has done so since Junior. 

At first it was a purely practical thing - the apple slowing down the rate at which his body breaks down and releases glucose so he’ll keep his energy for longer - but then it became a habit. Not a superstition, exactly, but he finds comfort in the repetition, finds his footing in this one constant on game day, in not having to make that choice. It sets him at ease to look at a clock and think ‘x amount of minutes until we take the ice, time to eat an apple.’ He prefers green apples to red, the darker and sourer the better, but he’s not too put out if it’s sweet instead, it’s not the kind of thing that would ruin his day because nothing is. 

He doesn’t have to eat the apple, he wants to. 

He takes pleasure in the routine and how it’s simple and straightforward, nothing that could ever complicate or hinder his pre-game preparations. 

And then Ryan gets drafted by the Edmonton Oilers. 

 

____

 

“Oh that looks good, can I have a bite?” 

Ryan blinks at Jordan, and then follows his nod to the apple Ryan is holding in his hand, half eaten already. 

It is a good apple. It’s especially crisp, so sour it’s making Ryan’s mouth water with every bite, and Ryan doesn’t want to share. That’s not how this works. 

“I … I guess?” 

Jordan keeps looking at him, is the thing, and Ryan still hasn’t learned how to say ‘no’ to anything he asks for, or looks longingly at, or expresses a vague interest in, or simply might enjoy, in Ryan’s opinion. 

So Ryan passes him the apple, and Jordan smiles at him around the quite frankly _monstrous_ chunk he bites out of it, but Ryan smiles back as he finishes it off because Jordan’s teeth marks leave a peaked little spike where the gap in his front teeth sits. Ryan carefully eats around that, biting away at the flesh of the apple down to the core until all that’s left is the mark Jordan’s mouth made in the skin. He saves that part for last, and when he’s still chewing on it he tosses the apple core at the garbage can in the corner by the locker room door. He makes the shot in one. 

He scores a hat trick that night, and he doesn’t for one second consider the possibility that something in his routine or lack thereof is responsible for it. Ryan doesn’t need or want the added aid of luck or anything like it. 

 

____

 

Jordan asks for a bite of Ryan’s apple again the next night, and Ryan hands it right over, doesn’t take so much as a second to think about it. 

 

____

 

It keeps happening, and Ryan keeps saying ‘yes’, or saying nothing at all - offering up his apple the second Jordan sits down next to him and makes eyes at it. 

Someone makes an offhand comment about their newly communal attitude to fruit and throws in a bible quote about temptation and being lead into it. 

They have no idea, Ryan thinks, watching the way the juice from his apple is drying shinily on the back of Jordan’s hand and still wet on his chin. 

 

____

 

One evening Jordan comes over and sits beside Ryan to tie his skate laces; pulls his knee up onto the bench and tightens the knot on the inside of his skate rather than in the middle, eyes on Ryan’s left side instead of on the logo in the middle of the floor. 

“C’mon, gimme,” he says, jerking his head at the apple Ryan is holding but making no move to hold a hand out for it. 

“Uh. Oh .. kay,” Ryan says, and holds the apple out to him, lifts it right up to Jordan’s mouth feeling like his abdomen is suddenly full of compressed air, too much of it packed tight and burning into the space below his ribs. He hopes and hopes and hopes his hand won’t shake. 

Jordan’s bite steadies it; his teeth fitting into the apple and biting down, keeping Ryan’s hand still. 

“Fhanks,” he says, mouth full, and Ryan thinks maybe he should switch fruits, bring an orange tomorrow so he can break it up in segments and share with anyone who might want some. 

 

____

 

Ryan keeps bringing apples, and Jordan keeps stealing bites. 

Only it’s not really stealing. Not at all. 

Ryan’s routine becomes something of a nervous habit instead. 

 

____

 

And it remains a habit that makes Ryan nervous for reasons that have nothing to do with the act or its nature - routine or otherwise. 

But Ryan has always been quick to adapt, and in no time at all Ryan’s hands hardly tremble, he barely notices the bite missing from his apple or how Jordan sometimes takes two, always leaves totally distinct marks in an apple that now routinely bears two sets of teeth marks instead of one. 

He finds his footing again, and it’s no big deal. Nothing at all important, again. 

 

____

 

Taylor is in the living room playing Xbox live, and Ryan is in the kitchen talking to his mother, his phone held between his ear and his shoulder. 

Barely thinking about it, he picks up an apple from the fruit bowl on the counter and takes a bite, chewing while he listens to his mother update him on the very serious, very interesting matter of her next door neighbour’s dog’s health. 

All caught up on the neighbourhood gossip of a street he hasn’t lived on since he was a kid, Ryan tells his mother he loves her and will call her in a couple days, hangs up and pockets his phone, goes to take another bite. 

Jordan stops him, appearing out of nowhere and with a hand on Ryan’s wrist. 

“Can I, can I just -” he starts, and Ryan is already lifting his hand, the gesture automatic when he has an apple and Jordan is in the room. 

But Jordan curls his fingers around the bones in Ryan’s wrist, his fingers warm and rough and careful over his pulse, and then he leans up and presses his mouth to Ryan’s, licks at his lips and tongue. When Ryan doesn’t respond, stuck stock still, Jordan goes up onto his toes and gets his other hand lost in Ryan’s hair. He smiles against Ryan’s mouth and kisses him properly; well, until Ryan is kissing back. 

“You’re a pretty big fan of apples, huh?” Ryan asks when they break apart. 

“Big, big fan,” Jordan says, going back for a bite of the apple that’s held loosely in Ryan’s hand now, “huge, really.” 

 

____

 

“The second you two start eating stuff off each other’s bodies, I’m out, just an FYI,” Taylor says at dinner the next night, grimacing as Jordan steals a piece of steak off Ryan’s fork before it makes it to his mouth. 

 

____  
____  
____


End file.
